Competent and good are not synonyms. Smart and good are not synonyms. Evil and competent are not synonyms. Virtues are not all moral virtues. Bravery is a morally neutral virtue. It makes bad people worse, and good people better and without it all virtues and vices are nearly meaningless. Competence is morally neutral. It is […]

She has learned well. We won’t say the Force is with her yet, mostly because she’s leaning too heavily on those data models. I don’t know anyone who wants to work for themselves and my personal experience with profit sharing is that it sucks and is no substitute for a living wage or income stability.

Oh, and the best way to fix the ACA? Price controls. JMHO. I know, nobody wants to talk about it but it’s the crucial piece that is missing from the US healthcare system that every other successful system in the world thinks is a no-brainer.

Which means we have no brains.

Anyway, that’s not what I wanted to talk about. I wanted to talk about Political GabFest, Slate’s political podcast. I checked it out last night because I wanted to find something boring to listen to so I could fall asleep. Turns out it’s better than I thought and I spent the night paying attention.

The hosts are John Dickerson, David Plotz and Emily Bazelon. Emily Bazelon breaks down the Supreme Court’s upcoming cases. There’s a lot of tension between the hosts. They seem fairly well informed and not too dogmatic, except I didn’t really understand Emily’s take on renaming the Woodrow Wilson School in Princeton. She’s missing the point of Princeton, which is about as traditional as you can get. I’m not saying it’s good. But it is where we get our titans of Wall Street and they have legacies, and eating clubs. Woodrow Wilson’s recent fall from grace could mean that the school gets renamed the Goldman-Sachs School. Be careful what you wish for, Em.

In general, Political GabFest gets a thumbs up. And I don’t even read Slate all that often. Binge listening gave me insight into how gobsmacked these three are by the two decade culmination of events. If you’ve been an outsider for the last 4 election cycles, well, you already know how bad things are. But if you’ve been hobnobbing with the in-crowd, even if you’re technically a lefty, the turn that Americans have made towards indiscriminate hatred and cruelty can come as a bit of a surprise.

I had my first “No shit Sherlock” moment when they started to talk about how Trump’s popularity seems to be resilient the more crazy his talk is. (see this week’s The Chaos Candidate and Is he Mussolini or Hitler?) Are they starting to sense a Dark Triad forming? That’s where three personality disorders, antisocial, narcissistic and Machiavellian come together. Can we compare Donald Trump’s rise to Mussolini or Hitler without violating Godwin’s law? I’m afraid we must. I’m going with Mussolini. We don’t see the cruelty yet.

But they’re shocked that things have gone this far without any brake on his outrageous talk. In fact, the more outrageous he is, the more support he seems to be getting. That’s starting to alarm them and they think it might be due to the amount of reinforcement he is getting from the right wing media. It says lies and repeats those lies over and over again and they start to stick. And that’s really scary. Shouldn’t someone do something??

It’s almost like the journalism world is finally waking up to the way things really are. Like they’re finally understanding Jon Stewart’s plea on CrossFire to stop because it’s hurting America. It’s all fun and games to bash liberals, treat politics as a horse race, do the “earth is round?, opinions differ” stories until the truth is no longer recognizable and people honestly can not tell how far they have strayed from where we were 20 years ago.

Oh, that’s right. For the past 22 years, we’ve had to put up with the Sally Quinn’s and Tweety’s painting this image of Hillary Clinton as being a cold, calculating, unpleasant, humorless opportunist. Turns out that when you actually start to pay attention, because she is one of the few candidates this campaign whose qualifications and experience have to be taken seriously, then you start to realize that maybe, just maybe, you’ve been lied to. But it is a universal truth that every Mean Girl Queen Bee knows that if you keep repeating lies and distortions, deliberately mischaracterize a person’s intentions and actions, and mock them relentlessly, the target’s actual behavior, while being perfectly normal, can almost be seen to be completely at odds with what you’ve been told. You’ve got to re-evaluate. Maybe you’ve been wrong.

Maybe the right has too much influence and can scare monger indiscriminately. Maybe they’ve taken things too far.

In the world of high control groups, we call this “waking up”. Now, if we could only get some of the other journalists to do this, acknowledge that they’ve been the unwitting flying monkeys of some people with dark intentions, and reverse course as quickly as possible. There’s more at stake than Hillary’s presidency.

Or about income instability. That’s very real, as you well know.
I’m not amused but I think that was the intention when Obama was elected. Preserve the banking industry, jettison all responsibilities for pensions, healthcare and incomes, and party on.
It’s working very well. I have no idea why anyone would want to inherit what’s coming in 2016.

She’s looking at the data models too much. Data models can be wrong and Obama didn’t get to the WH on a data model. He got there by brute force intimidation of voters.

I share your “having no idea”. I remember loudly predicting that Clinton would understand the Presidency to be such a poisoned chalice in 2016 that nothing could possibly persuade her to drink from it. Yet here she is, desperately seeking to drink deep the poison potion for at least 4 years. How wrong I was.

The question is: what does Clinton want to do? What does she think she can possibly do? Why, Clinton, Why? Why why why?

I heard little snippets of the Dparty debate of last night replayed on NPR today. I know I heard Senator Clinton herself saying the Regime in Syria needed to be Changed. I know I have heard her in the past support in the firmest way possible the forcible establishment of a No Fly Zone in Northern Syria on its border with Turkey.

In my considered opinion, the forcible establishment of a No Fly Zone is meant to keep Russian air power prevented from supporting the Assad government forces in their war with the Rebellion. That risks war with Russia, which Candidate Clinton seems willing to risk. Also, in light of the fact that ex PM Blair’s analysis group was discussed on BBC last night as having admitted that about 60% of the non-ISIS rebels in Syria are jihadists with the same basic ideology that ISIS has; it seems clear that toppling the Assad regime would hand Syria over to the jihadists. Does Clinton not realize this? Or does she realize this very well, and consider it an acceptable trade-off for topping the Assad regime?

Clinton’s support of the No Fly Zone and Regime Change against Assad are facts so basic that Clinton’s support base loses all credibility if it tries to pretend that these facts are not factual. So . . . does Clinton’s base support Assad-Mus-Go? Does Clinton’s base support the No Fly Zone in Syria? If so, how do they defend that support?

Tony “the poodle” Blair? Who went all in with George W on War?
I think we must consider the source. Also, Isis didn’t exist when the Syrian war started. What Clinton is saying I think is that there was a golden moment where air power in Syria could have ended assad’s regime much more quickly and that since then, the forces that tried to overthrow him have been infiltrated by Isis. It’s the worst of all outcomes. We didn’t step in to help force a tipping point and as a result, opponents of Assad were weakened and the chaos provided a rich breeding ground for fundamentalism to take hold.
That’s what usually happens, instability, whether security related or economic causes people to turn to religion.

Considering-the-source is always a good cautionary idea. On the other hand, it seems to reflect and confirm things that lots of other observers were seeing long before. Within about 3 weeks of the beginning of armed conflict in Syria, Colonel Lang (who had started off sympathising with the protestors) quickly noted the near-immediate appearance of Saudi and Qatari support for armed factions within the rebels. At which point he predicted this was going to be a Saudi-Qatari jihadist show right from the start, and the “secular moderate” rebels were never going to be a predominant force.

I too think we missed a Golden Moment. However, I think the Golden Moment was an opportunity to support Assad fast and hard right from the start so he could get the incipient rebellion crushed fast and hard. He is/was a brutal SECularist dictator, under whom various religious factions were permitted to survive as long as none tried to impose religionist obedience or dhimitude upon the observance of any of the others.

Now we have another Golden Moment. The entry of Russia into the war in a big big way gives us an opportunity to cancel our membership in the Axis of Jihad and join Putin and Assad in supporting the Coalition Of Lawful Authority. We have a chance to help Assad exterminate all the rats and roaches of rebellion, down to the very last rat and roach.

And yet Clinton, even now, STILL wants us to regime-change Syria, establish a No Fly Zone, etc. Does she even yet still not realize that such a course of action would hand Syria over to the liver-eating headchopping throatcutter Islamis Jihadist cannibals? Who are the beloved pets of KSA, Qatar, and Erdogan?

( By the way, does Clinton join Biden and Obama in supporting the nazi-nazi banderazi illegal coup government currently squatting in power in Kiev?)

@RUR: The Neocons’ Actual Country (TNAC) wants chaos in the Middle East, so TNAC can reign supreme in the Middle East. The Kingdom Of Headchoppers wants all secular and Shi’ite states replaced by Wahhabi fanatic states, so the KoH can reign supreme in the Middle East. (Islam, as a whole, is not the problem; Wahhabi Islam is the problem.)

A healthy, secular Syria would stand as a major obstacle to the goals of our two foulest “allies”.

No candidate of the Imperial Plutocratic Party, whether of the Reptilian wing or the Dinocratic wing, can enter the White House without pledging allegiance to TNAC and the KoH, because those two “allies” control so much money.

I fear the only solution will be the ultimate bankruptcy of the Empire. I’m 52, so if I’m lucky, it’ll last long enough for me to die of old age first.

One of Colonel Lang’s occasional guest commenters (F B Ali, who rose to become a Brigadier General in the Pakistan Army before he had to leave Pakistan under pressure from the Islamist Dictator Mohammed Zia ul Haq) has said that in a couple of posts. That the KSA with its vast oil money stream has been funding Wahabbi Missionary outreach all over the world. ( There are other storm centers of extremism in Islam . . . the Muslim Brotherhood, the Deobandi schools originating in North India, etc. But Wahabbi-ism is a big one).

Candidate Sanders would be satisfied to see a Lesser Izrul and a Lesser Palstine at mutual peace with eachother. He would also like to see us somewhat distanced from KSA policy and was never interested in Regime Changing Syria . . . unless I missed something. The automatic reply is that Sanders isn’t serious, and therefor doesn’t count. But Sanders could be as serious as the number of primary voters and therefor delegates he can accumulate. And he may not comply quietly if Clinton and the Inner Party try to pull an “Obama” on candidate Sanders. So Sanders could become as serious as his base ( if he ends up having one) could make him.

Trump is entertaining. What would be his approach to Izrul, Sawdi Arabia, etc.? Eventually he may have to answer that. But I think he will get a lot of votes from bitter people who want to fling poo in the face of the system. Enough votes to become Serious? Maybe.

I’m not sure why what RD is saying — military force applied in the right way at the right time can and has stopped dictators — is hard to grasp. But apparently it can be if you’re furious enough that Lil Shrub lied us into useless war. And that Obama has continued it after getting a Nobel Peace Prize for … something.

That’s not helpful, people. Hillary has shown time and again that she understands situations, known which actions could be effective in those situations, and done a great deal to bring those actions to bear. She’s done it legislating in the Senate with the usual clown car of Repubs. She’s done it at State with all the frustrations of working with the rest of the Administration and with diplomats.

Face it. She’s knows what she’s doing and she’s better at it than anybody in living memory (unless you’re really old). I’m not saying you have to like her or agree with her. I’m just saying that her talent is undeniable.

Who says anyone is doing it consciously? It could simply be an echo of the Hillary-bashing of the 2008 Oborg campaign.

I, for one, harbor suspicions that the Dinocrats simply play the Good Cop to the Reptilians’ Bad Cop. (To the GOP base, the roles of “good cop” and “bad cop” would be reversed, but the same principle applies.)

The Good Cop is not your friend. 👿

Obama and HRC–and Sanders, who is no dove on foreign policy–demonstrate that no one will be allowed into the White House who is not willing to slaughter as many brown children in “collateral damage” as necessary to further the goal of the Malefactors Of Great Wealth (aka “the 1%”, though it’s closer to 0.1%) of owning everything and everyone on the planet.

On foreign policy, the only difference between the two parties (or the two wings of the one party) is that the Dinocrats do imperial capitalism more shrewdly than the Reptilians. I may still vote for Hill and the Dinos for that reason, and for the domestic policy differences, but I’ll be holding my nose.

I hate the Empire of Capital. I want our Republic back.

(Note I said “Empire of Capital”, not “Empire of the USA” or “American Empire”. Capital is Palpatine. Uncle Sam is merely Darth Vader.)

I think you think you are talking to me. If so, you misunderstand what I am saying. Clinton’s problem regarding Syria is that she wanted/ wants to use force to support The Wrong Side. Assad is the Right Side to support, as I explained above. The cannibal headchopping liver-eating Islamist jihadi Savages seeking to overthrow Assad are the Wrong Side. They were ALWAYS the wrong side.

One can either be with the Assad Secularists for Lawful Order in Syria, or one can be with the jihadi terrorists in Syria and their Saudi, Qatari and Turkish supporters. To paraphrase what Dubya Bush said, you are either with Assad, or you are with the terrorists. So far, Clinton has chosen to be with the terrorists. I find that very disturbing.

You can see this analysed in great detail over at Colonel Lang’s Sic Semper Tyrannis blog. i would be very interested in any evidence showing Lang’s blog to be a “left wing” blog.

Thanks for the links. I might read some Cannonfire now and again. I have occasionally visited Counterpunch off and on over the last few years and enjoy Mike Whitney’s articles when I find them.

I would also myself recomment Sic Semper Tyrannis by (Retired) Colonel Pat Lang. I visit that one every computer session, along with
The Confluence and Naked Capitalism. There are some others I look at fairly regularly.

For some reality-based High-Concept tinfoil, I recomment Rigorous Intuition. (A slightly updated version is called Rigorous Intuition 2.0 ).
It hasn’t posted anything new for a couple years at least, but all the prior material remains up and is very interesting.

I’m to the point of supporting the Democratic presidential candidate only because he or she MIGHT appoint a rational Supreme Court Justice. I take Cannonfire with a grain of salt but you got Ted Rall saying much the same about Syria.

I’m to the point of “not caring” about Supreme Court nominees anymore. I get the strong feeling that the DemParty extorts my support by scary thoughts of Repuglan Supreme Court Nominees under a Repuglan President. Through such fear do they extort my loyal vote for yet another cycle.

I begin to think its a shuck and a con they are running on me.

Voting for Trump would be the best way i can think of to throw a bag full of boogers and feces into the face of The System.

As to your question of what is going on on the left with regard to Senator Clinton . . . Ian Welsh’s newest post can explain some of it and numerous posts at Naked Capitalism can explain some of it. I believe i remember you writing that you met in person the man behind “Lambert Strether” at the Occupy Protests in NYC. If you are in some kind of analog-meatspace touch with the Man behind the Strether, he could perhaps tell you what it is and where it is coming from and why.

Body: Last week I went down to Washington, D.C. to deliver a paper at a conference in the technical field where I worked, ten years or so and two or three careers ago, before the dot.com trash. The trip was solely an exercise in merit-making, since I doubt very much I'll get work in the field, but reconnecting with old friends was really great -- even […]

"Barrett Brown has been released from prison; WikiLeaks publishes to celebrate: Today, investigative journalist Barrett Brown has been released from FCI Three Rivers to a halfway house outside Dallas, earlier than initially scheduled. His parents picked him up from the federal prison to drive him six hours to his new residence. Brown's release come […]